Understanding Sensory Ecology

As visual creatures, humans sometimes have difficulty understanding how other organisms encounter their environments through nonvisual means. Many organisms rely predominantly or exclusively on senses other than sight, including olfaction, chemoreception, and thermoreception. This lesson will give high school students insights into how other organisms encounter their environment, the benefits and limitations of different senses, and why we should be aware of other organisms’ perceptions. Educating students about sensory ecology introduces fundamental concepts in physiology, ecology, and animal behavior. Students will learn a new vocabulary term (umwelt) and about the sensory ecology of other organisms via an active-participation presentation, collect and analyze data on sensory disruption of classmates, and put their new knowledge to work by brainstorming ways in which human activity interacts with the sensory ecology of wildlife through case studies (Common Core State Standard HS-LS2-7).